“Aap kisse baat karna chahte hain?” Hanif Ganderi asks over the phone. The telephone line is alive with a myriad sounds — the piercing whistle of a locomotive, people’s voices, but mostly, the noise of slow-moving traffic. I tell Hanif that I want him to help me set up an interview with Qutubuddin Ansari. Hanif, who oversees the relief operations in the camps set up for displaced Muslims in and around Godhra, does not seem to be familiar with the name. “Ansari kaun?” he asks, raising his voice to make himself heard above the din. So I tell him about the famous photograph, of a man with folded hands, begging to be rescued from a mob during the riots in Gujarat. That man was Ansari, who came to be dubbed the ‘face of Gujarat riots’ in the national media. This time, Hanif seems to remember something. He tells me that he knows some clerics in Ahmedabad who might help and asks me to call him back after two days.

Two days later, it is Hanif who calls. He says that Ansari will not talk. When Hanif went to meet Ansari in Naroda Patiya, he was told by his family that Ansari was “away at some other place”. Nobody in Ansari’s family seemed to know when he would return. But they did know one thing for certain; Ansari would not give an interview.

I asked Hanif if he could help me trace Ansari. Hanif did not offer any hope. “Kahanpe dhundenge usse itni bade jaga pe”?

Ansari’s silence tells many tales. One of which is that things have not changed much since the carnage. Muslims continue to be persecuted and intimidated, even five years after the bloodshed. The rehabilitation process is in a shambles. A visit by the National Commission for Minorities to 17 relief colonies last year revealed that the displaced population were being denied basic public services. The government denies the existence of these shelters, and has claimed “riot-affected people have returned to their homes”. The few who have managed to return have been allowed to do so on the condition that they would not go ahead with the charges against their attackers. Clearly, it is not the best of times to speak up. And Ansari, like many others, has chosen to remain invisible in order to survive.

Curiously, Ansari’s invisibility works at another level. Not many Muslims in Gujarat have heard of him. Rajesh Pandya (name changed), a social worker who has been involved in monitoring the rehabilitation in Godhra, offers an interesting explanation for Ansari’s anonymity. He says that the average Muslim, with access to the vernacular press, is more interested in someone like Bilkis Bano rather than Ansari. Bano is a more popular figure, and her fight for justice is followed closely by her community. Ansari, on the other hand, is seen as a ‘creation’ of the English language media. Thus, while the rest of India may look at Ansari as the face of the riots, to his own community, he is just one of the many survivors.

Ansari had once confessed that he found it difficult to bear the burden of his ‘face’, and that he wanted to lead a normal life once Gujarat became safer for Muslims. Five years after the riots, Ansari still carries the burden, and waits for an ordinary life.